


Smoke

by Samwritess



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, One Shot, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:48:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26303686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Samwritess/pseuds/Samwritess
Summary: She only smokes when she's mad at him.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 5
Kudos: 29





	Smoke

She only smokes when she’s mad at him. 

He doesn’t like it, but he wouldn’t say anything. He watches her crawl off her bed, mumble something about getting ice, grabbing her purse on the way out, knowing that 20 minutes later he’ll find her on the deck of their motel under flickering lights surrounded by smoke. If he doesn’t find her out there, he’ll knock on her door to say goodnight and smell it on her, the haze, the fire, the pain. 

If she forgives him afterwards, she’ll try to cover the scent with perfume, and she goes to bed smelling of a molten mix of ash and jasmine that gives her a headache. If she doesn’t, well, she lets him smell it. She knows he does. She can see his eyes darken to coals as he stands over her and inhales unmistakable evidence that she is in fact  _ pissed _ .

Maybe she just wants him to say something, so that's why she lets it linger. When he finds her out leaning against a cement pole with a filter pressed to her lips inhaling and exhaling tar and embers because nicotine is almost,  _ almost _ , as addicting as him, she finds herself wishing that he would come over and slap it out of her fingers. Crush it beneath his heel and get upset, get angry, at least care about her lungs if not the rest of her. 

Instead, when he finds her exactly where he knew she would be that night, he simply watches. She notices when light streams out of his room into the smoggy air of the outside. She’s halfway through her third favorite coping mechanism and she's still mad. He catches her eye as she takes a drag and she holds his gaze, steady in her defiance. 

He doesn’t usually watch. 

When she exhales in a steady stream of smoke his gaze drifts down her cheek and over her lips. 

She raises the cigarette back to her lips, ready to put on a show, but he lets the room door shut and makes his way over to her. The golden light that had been illuminating him is shut out and he becomes lit just like her under the blue light of the moon.

She’s ready for him to yell. She wishes he would. He stands within the bubble of fog she’d formed around herself. She goes to finish what she started, moving the cigarette closer to her lips once more but he reaches out and grabs her by the wrist, rough hands moving roughly.

_ Good, _ she thinks. 

But just as quickly as his fingers tightened around her wrist they loosened. He more so guided her hand back to her side, away from her lips. He was looking at her lips. 

With her hand still encircled in his grip, he leaned forward and pulled her into him. He hated the way she tasted, but this wasn’t for him. He probably tasted of motel whiskey thinly veiled in toothpaste, not too pleasant for her either. Who was it for then? 

He pulled at her lips with his own and she responded in kind, pushing and pulling against him, bitter lips and bitter tongues. Her gasps and his groans, surrounded by the buzzing of mosquitoes and rumble of traffic in the distance. He could get lost in the smoke of her. 

When he pulled back she didn’t meet his gaze, so he dropped her wrist and instead used his hand to tilt her chin up, forcing her into communication. 

“Was that supposed to be an apology?” she whispered, and he would have nodded if he had known what he’d done wrong. But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. 

“Put out the cigarette, Scully” 

If she’s being honest, she doesn’t really know why she doesn’t. She very much could have, but something about the fact fact that he thinks he can just come over here and do  _ that _ and just fix all of their little problems made her take a final draw, long and slow, before dropping the finished butt to the ground and stepping on it. She exhales not at his face but at his chest, and pushes past him before she can see the disappointment in his eyes, resigned to the fact that her sheets will smell like smoke when she wakes up in the morning. 


End file.
